I represent the first generation who, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson.
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Monday, October 26, 2015

This Week in Television History: October 2015 PART IV

As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.

October 27, 1945

U.S. President Harry S. Truman made his first
live television appearance.

President Harry S. Truman made his first
"live" television appearance at a Navy Day speech in New York's Central
Park on October 27, 1945.

October 28, 1950

Popular radio personality Jack Benny moves to
television with The Jack Benny Program. The TV version of the show ran for the next 15 years.

Jack Benny was born
Benjamin Kubelsky in 1894. His father, a Lithuanian immigrant, ran a saloon in
Waukegan, Illinois, near Chicago. Benny began playing violin at age six and
continued through high school. He began touring on the vaudeville circuit in
1917. In 1918, he joined the navy and was assigned to entertain the troops with
his music but soon discovered a flair for comedy as well. After World War I,
Benny returned to vaudeville as a comedian and became a top act in the 1920s.
In 1927, he married an actress named Sadye Marks; the couple stayed together
until Benny's death in 1974.

Benny's success in
vaudeville soon won him attention from Hollywood, where he made his film debut
in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Over the years, he won larger roles, notably
in Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). Movies
were only a sideline for Benny, though, who found his natural medium in radio
in 1932.

In March 1932,
then-newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, dabbling in radio, asked Benny to do an
on-air interview. Benny reluctantly agreed. His comedy, though, was so
successful that Benny was offered his own show almost immediately, which
debuted just a few months later. At first a mostly musical show with a few
minutes of Benny's comedy during interludes, the show evolved to become mostly
comedy, incorporating well-developed skits and regular characters. In many of
these skits, Benny portrayed himself as a vain egomaniac and notorious
pinchpenny who refused to replace his (very noisy) antique car and who kept his
money in a closely guarded vault. His regulars included his wife, whose
character, Mary Livingstone, deflated Benny's ego at every opportunity; Mel
Blanc, who used his famous voice to play Benny's noisy car, his exasperated
French violin teacher, and other characters; and Eddie Andersen, one of radio's
first African American stars, who played Benny's long-suffering valet,
Rochester Van Jones. The program ran until 1955.

In
the 1950s, Benny began experimenting with television, making specials in 1950,
1951, and 1952. Starting in 1952, The Jack Benny Show aired regularly,
at first once every four weeks, then every other week, then finally every week
from 1960 to 1965. Benny was as big a hit on TV as on the radio. Despite the
stingy skinflint image he cultivated on the air, Benny was known for his
generosity and modesty in real life. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in
1974.

Winkler is best known for his
role as Fonzie on the 1970s American sitcomHappy Days.
"The Fonz", a leather-clad greaser
and auto mechanic, started out as a minor character
at the show's beginning, but had achieved top billing by the time the show
ended. Winkler started acting by appearing in a number of television
commercials. In October 1973, he was cast for the role of Arthur Herbert
Fonzarelli, nicknamed The Fonz or Fonzie, in the TV show Happy Days. The show was first aired in
January 1974. During his decade on Happy Days, Winkler also starred in a
number of movies, including The Lords of
Flatbush (1974), playing a troubled Vietnam veteran
in Heroes (1977), The One and Only (1978), and a morgue
attendant in Night Shift
(1982), which was directed by Happy Days co-star Ron
Howard.

After Happy Days, Winkler put his acting career on the back burner,
as he began concentrating on producing and directing. He quickly worked on
developing his own production company and, within months, he had opened Winkler-Rich
Productions.

As the 1990s continued, Winkler began a return to acting. In 1994 he
returned to TV with the short-lived right-wing comedy Monty on Fox
which sank in mere weeks. Also in 1994, he co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in
the holiday TV movie "One Christmas", her last film. In 1998, Adam Sandler asked Winkler to play a
college football coach, a supporting role in The Waterboy (1998). He would later
appear in three other Sandler films, Little Nicky
(2000) where he plays himself and is covered in bees, Click (2006, as the main character's
father), and You
Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). He has also played small roles
in movies such as Down to You
(2000), Holes (2003), and I Could
Never Be Your Woman (2007).

Winkler recently had a recurring role as incompetent lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn in the Fox Television comedy Arrested
Development. In one episode, his character hopped over a dead
shark lying on a pier, a reference to his role in the origin of the phrase
"jumping the shark".
After that episode, Winkler in interviews stated that he was the only person to
have "jumped the shark" twice.

When Winkler moved to CBS for one season to star in 2005–06's Out of Practice, his role as the Bluth
family lawyer on Arrested Development was taken over by Happy Days
co-star Scott Baio in the fall of 2005, shortly
before the acclaimed but Nielsen-challenged show ceased production.

The rally was a combination of what initially were
announced as separate events: Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and
Colbert's counterpart, the "March to Keep Fear Alive." Its stated
purpose was to provide a venue for attendees to be heard above what Stewart
described as the more vocal and extreme 15–20% of Americans who "control
the conversation" of American
politics, the argument being that
these extremes demonize each other and engage in counterproductive actions,
with a return to sanity intended to promote reasoned discussion. Despite
Stewart's insistence to the contrary, news reports cast the rally as a spoof of
Glenn Beck's
Restoring Honor
rally and Al Sharpton's
Reclaim
the Dream rally.

CHILD OF TELEVISION @ iTunes

Pre-ramble

I represent the first generation whom, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson.
Read the full "Pre-ramble"